• Restoring Our 1890 Victorian •

Marriage

Paul and I spent Saturday discussing the kitchen… Or rather, we began a conversation about the kitchen which morphed into generalized irritation, which seamlessly merged into every fight we have ever had about anything house-related.

The kind of irritation that makes you want to lay down on the floor in surrender and say– I give up. You win. This entire conversation is all yours.

Knock. Yourself. Out.

But instead you tiredly suit up for combat because for some reason you must defend the honor of your irritation.

Two posts ago, I went back to the beginning of our house renovation—how my husband and I decided to buy an old house and fix it up… a decision based around the front-door’s antique hardware. And an imaginary before-and-after picture that lived in my head—a picture designed by a DIY-enthusiasm that came from not ever having fixed anything.

We thought it was a good idea to move into a crumbling Victorian house… restore it… do all the work ourselves… while living here.

This is Part Three, where I realize the true meaning of fixing up an old house.

For the first two years, there were always multiple rooms with “containment issues” Meaning: one part was “livable” and the other was trashed. Destroyed. An explosion of plaster and lath and 120 years of dust.

And we were always trying to keep the “trashed” part separate. Or? One of us was: me.
The other of us thought containment was over-rated.

The other of us thought the ONLY acceptable use of time was action… To wade in and just GO.